This Tuesday, November 2 marks the international day for the fight against impunity for crimes committed against journalists. Since 1992, more than 2,000 have died and 9 times out of 10 the murderers are not prosecuted. Reporters Without Borders launches a Peoples’ Tribunal in The Hague in the Netherlands, place of international justice. False trials in a way without legal value but created to denounce the failings of justice and put pressure on States.
The opening hearing of #ThePeoplesTribunal on the murder of journalists has started in The Hague, in the #Netherlands. Among the famous figures who will testify today: @mariaressa, Nobel Peace laureate, @Irenekhan, @mercan_resifi, @mcaruanagalizia, @caoilfhionnanna. pic.twitter.com/1TuT7gMryk
– Christophe Deloire (@cdeloire) November 2, 2021
In Mexico, 92% of murders of journalists go unpunished
Two journalists were murdered last week in Mexico. A country where crimes of this kind have been very numerous in recent years. The tribunal against the impunity of the murders of journalists will examine in particular the case of a Mexican journalist killed in 2011, Miguel Ángel López Velasco said Milo Vela. Armed men broke into his home, killing him, his wife and 21-year-old son. Ten years later his death is still unpunished.
Not only have the perpetrators of this crime not been identified, but the authorities have also failed to shed light on the motive for the assassination. Milo Vela was a reporter and columnist for the regional media Notiver, in the state of Veracruz. In this area of eastern Mexico, violence linked to drug trafficking and organized crime exploded ten years ago. Some time before his death, a criminal organization had sent him a message of very explicit threats: “Heads will roll and Milo Vela knows it well”. His assassination was one of the first in a long series of crimes against journalists in Veracruz: no less than 30 such assassinations in ten years. More globally, 143 journalists have been killed for reasons related to their work in Mexico over the past twenty years.
Impunity is obviously at the heart of these cases, as the peoples’ tribunal in The Hague emphasizes. This is why Mexico is now on the dock for failing to deliver justice in the Milo Vela case and in hundreds of other cases. 92% of murders of journalists go unpunished, which places Mexico sixth in the world in terms of impunity for crimes against the press according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In general, the investigations are considered to be deficient, not only because of the structural flaws in the Mexican judicial system, in particular with regard to the treatment of crime scenes, but also because the investigations very often do not take into account the journalistic work of the victims. . These are crimes that are treated as falling within the private sphere or journalists are stigmatized by the authorities who attribute to them links with organized crime.
In Syria, a young journalist died in detention
The RSF Peoples Court also intends to investigate the disappearance of Nabil Sharbaji, who died while detained in prison in 2015, near Damascus. Torture, illness caused by the conditions of detention, execution, in one of the jails where tens of thousands of Syrians are languishing? He is one of those young Syrians whose journey came to an abrupt end.
Nabil Sharbaji was part of the “Daraya Youth” group, known for its peaceful activism, and created long before the 2011 uprising against the power of Bashar Al-Assad. He took an active part in this uprising. He was arrested for the first time during the demonstration which marked the start of the Syrian revolt in Damascus in March 2011. He was then released, joined Daraya, on the outskirts of the capital. Like the other young people in his group, he advocates the rejection of violence and revenge, despite the regime’s repression. Engaged, he dreams of getting married. Journalist, he will also participate in the creation by young people of Daraya of an online information site, Enab Baladi, it means “the grapes of my country”. But Nabil will not follow its development. He was arrested in Daraya in February 2012 by the Syrian security services. Transferred to several prisons, where he was tortured, he lived in the midst of death and illness, in unsanitary prisons. In December 2016, Enab Baladi wrote to have had confirmation of his death, he died 18 months earlier.
For his friends in Daraya, those who survived the arrests and then the siege imposed by regime forces on the city for several years, Nabil Sharbaji represented another possible Syria. While jihadists were released from prison at the very start of the uprising, civil society activists were arrested, tortured, killed, or forced into exile.
His friends fromEnab Baladi have not forgotten it. They paid homage several times to Nabil, published extracts from his letters written in prison, in which resounded his hope to get out of confinement, to survive. The site, now based outside Syria, is part of the new Arab media, it is in part the legacy of Nabil Sharbaji.